Domains

Dates

Places

Context

The war in Crimea can be seen in retrospect as one episode in
the long slow triumph of Russia over the declining Ottoman Empire
through wars which broke out every generation from 1676 to 1878,
and its advance south to the Black Sea and long-desired warm-water
ports. The immediate pretext for the war was the Russian invasion
in 1853 of the Ottoman provinces of Moldavia and Walachia at the
mouth of the Danube (modern Romania) under the claim that orthodox
Christians among the population needed their protection. In this
claim Russia was following the example of an agreement which the
French had extracted from Turkey in February 1852 that
administrative responsibility for the Christian places of worship
in the Holy Land would henceforth be …

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